Just to put some figures out there for perspective, an estimated 800 million CDs were sold in 2001, in comparison to just 89 million sold in 2017.
That's a drop of nearly 90%, according to figures by Billboard who are reporting that a major US retailer - Best Buy - are planning to cease sales of the CD format from July of this year. At the height of the format's power, Best Buy was one of the largest music stockists in the US, however the slump of physical sales in the US has reached a stage where it's no longer profitable to continue to sell them.
On top of this, another major US retailer - Target - is now trying to work out a deal where record labels will buy back unused CDs and shift the risk from their side to the labels. All of this comes as Spotify now boasts a valuation of something in the region of $16 billion in value, with revenue of $2.2 billion in the first half of 2017.
Best Buy's move to drop CDs has been a long time coming, and will almost definitely be repeated elsewhere if the downward trend in CD sales continue.
Via Billboard
